Who are the "rebels"? Why are the rebel groups of governments we don't like always based in an apartment in London or norther Virginia? Where'd the rebels get their money and guns from. How come CNN can find the rebels but the Syrian government apparently shells cities (according to the rebels) looking for them.

Russia ready for showdown with UK over arms being transported to Syria in cargo ship

Daily Mail
Will Stewart: July 14th, 2012

Russia is heading for a diplomatic stand-off with Britain over a cargo ship carrying helicopter gunships destined for Syria, which is accompanied by the Russian navy.

The Russian MV Alaed, which is transporting three Mi-25 attack helicopters and air defence systems, is sailing south of Norway followed at a distance of 50 nautical miles by the four navy ships.

Last month, Britain dramatically halted the Alaed off the coast of Scotland by withdrawing its London-based insurance cover, citing an EU ban on arms deliveries to the government in Damascus.

Foreign Secretary William Hague protested to Moscow and Prime Minister David Cameron is understood to have considered storming the ship before it returned to the Arctic port of Murmansk.

But the Alaed set sail again last week, this time under a Russian flag rather than one from the Caribbean island of Curacao, which means any attempt to board it could trigger an international incident.

In order to reach Syria, the vessel will have to skirt round British waters.

A top Russian naval source yesterday confirmed that a formal order was expected soon for the Russian naval ships to provide a close escort for the Alaed.

The source at the Russian Navy Main Staff said: ‘I hope that no one will be unleashing World War Three because of it. We have not yet been ordered to escort the ship, but understand such an order can come at any time. The operation has already been planned.’ He refused to give further details of the operation.

Norwegian defence officials have confirmed that the Alaed is sailing along its coastline with the Russian ships behind. ‘They are sailing in the same direction,’ said one.

Officially, the Alaed is now bound for the Russian naval port of Baltiysk in the Baltic, and then to St Petersburg before sailing to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.

But Russian officials have repeatedly made clear that the final destination of the cargo is Syria.

Some experts suspect the vessel may now sail close to the British Isles this week, sparking a tense showdown. Others believe the cargo may be transferred to another ship before being taken to Syria.

Vyacheslav Dzirkaln, the deputy head of Russia’s military technical co-operation agency, warned at the Farnborough Airshow last week: ‘The fleet will be sent on task to guarantee the safety of our ships, to prevent anyone interfering with them in the event of a blockade.’

Moscow has insisted that it is not bound by EU restrictions and that, in any case, the helicopters would not be used against civilians.

It insists the ship has every right within international law to deliver the cargo, fulfilling a 2009 contract to repair the attack helicopters.

Last night, a Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘We’re aware of reports that the MV Alaed is on the move, but its final destination is not clear.’

Interesting times. Russia is putting an end to the American/UK "Anglo-American Banking Establishment" use of covert regime change, both by clamping down on NGO's in Russia and working to stop the more aggressive regime change machine in Syria and Iran. I'm with the Axis on this.

Who are the "rebels"? Why are the rebel groups of governments we don't like always based in an apartment in London or norther Virginia? Where'd the rebels get their money and guns from. How come CNN can find the rebels but the Syrian government apparently shells cities (according to the rebels) looking for them.

While it is grusome to watch, countries have a right to work out their own political arrangements. Some countries were lucky in history and foreigners stayed out of their internal affairs. Others were not so lucky. GENERALLY speaking, it is better when others stay out and let the locals work it out on their own.

It is odd (and rather disturbing) that so many Westerners lately have turned against democracy and decided that dictatorship for others is the way forward. It makes me wonder when they will decide that dictatorship at home is the way 'forward'.

I thought it was all kind of well known that the Syrian rebels get their arms and money from Turkey and Saudi Arabia , just like the Syrian army is being supplied by Russia , China and Iran.

This was also the case with Libya.

Since there all the borders of every arab nation except for Egypt were created by European powers. It is not at all suprising that when one revolts started in one arab country it qucky spread to others.

the U.S. is reportedly playing a significant role in the arrangement, too, broadening its contacts with the rebels to better coordinate the weapons transfers. "In other words, America is the go-between, the crucial link ensuring that the most useful weaponry goes through to where the rebels need it most"

BEIRUT —A bombing in Damascus on Wednesday killed at least three key members of President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle, a devastating strike that came hours before a U.N. Security Council debate on the Syria conflict and added to mounting evidence that Assad’s security forces may be losing control of the capital.

Russia and China have used their vetoes twice before over Syria and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned their latest action as "inexcusable and indefensible".

"They have turned their back on the people of Syria in their darkest hour," he said.

Under the Western-backed plan, the Damascus government would have been threatened with non-military sanctions under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter if it failed to move troops and heavy weapons from populated areas.

It was the use of Chapter Seven that stirred Moscow's objections. It opened the path to "external military involvement in Syrian domestic affairs", Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin argued.

US ambassador Susan Rice said that any suggestion of military force was "paranoid if not disingenuous".

Susan could just as well be talking about the prevailing PoV of Dave's CE.

Of course, Chapter 7 does open the door to military involvement, but Western legal trickery hardly makes Asiatic autocratic complicity any more defensible.

It is odd (and rather disturbing) that so many Westerners lately have turned against democracy

The 'rebels' in Syria are fighting for 'democracy'?

I was refering to Egypt and Libya, hence 'lately'.

So far as I can tell, Syria is a mess and it could just be one minority slaughtering its way to the top to replace another minority. It's hard to tell with the reports we've been getting out of the place.

It looks to me like sanctions are about all anyone outside can do at this point. Clearly someone is sending in supplies. I would not be at all surprised if we are doing it, too. Beyond that, (it always happens in a civil war), for now, I say keep hands off.

Earlier this year, a debate on how to foster reading habits among Arab youth was prompted after the Arab Thought Foundation’s Fikr released its fourth annual cultural development report in January, saying that the average Arab child reads “six minutes” a year in comparison to 12,000 minutes its Western counterpart spends.

It also reported that an Arab individual on average reads a quarter of a page a year compared to the 11 books read by an American and seven books by a British person.

They'll wing it. Build a new society by gut feeling. Isn't the unemployment/underemployment rate there high? What do they do all day?

It is well worth the time. Though it suffers from Orwellian obfuscation:

Quote:

It's a tale about some of the most quoted members of the Syrian opposition and their connection to the Anglo-American opposition creation business. The mainstream news media have, in the main, been remarkably passive when it comes to Syrian sources: billing them simply as "official spokesmen" or "pro-democracy campaigners" without, for the most part, scrutinising their statements, their backgrounds or their political connections.

Anglo-American. It's like a standup routine that is hilarious but almost nobody gets.

Everybody knows the US is backing the rebels to the hilt: they might as well rename themselves Hillary’s Hellions. No, what’s significant here is the floating of the ridiculous idea the Obamaites are afraid of the political consequences of arming the rebels, and openly intervening, because this is a presidential election year.

The assumption is that Obama and the Democrats will have to pay a political price for intervening in Syria’s civil war — but to whom will the price be paid? Republican hawks, led by John McCain and Lindsay Graham, are harrying the administration for not intervening more strenuously and openly, while Mitt Romney — while not yet calling for airstrikes, per McCain and Graham — criticizes the White House’s “paralysis” and calls for openly arming the rebels, rather than doing it under the table.

As for the prospect of Obama alienating some of his supporters on the left-wing of the Democratic party: this didn’t happen when it came to Libya, and I doubt intervening in Syria would deflate the President’s enormous credibility in those quarters, where identity politics long ago displaced anti-imperialism as an ideological priority. “Humanitarian” interventionism is today the default foreign policy agenda of the liberal-left, with only old-fashioned Marxists dissenting.

This presidential election season will not differ from any others in recent history when it comes to foreign policy issues. As Garet Garret, a conservative journalist of libertarian leanings, put it in 1952:

“Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.”

While there are some in both parties who question some aspects of our globalist foreign policy, the interventionists control the leadership. Indeed, that is one of the main benefits of having two state-privileged parties and draconian ballot access laws that exclude all others — it’s far easier to establish and maintain a stranglehold on just two parties than on multiple competitors in the electoral arena.

I’ve often referred to the “burden of empire” in this space, and this is usually calculated in terms of the cost in blood and treasure. But get a load of what Abdulbaset Sieda, who heads up the Syrian National Council, has to say:

“We want for America and the Western countries to carry out their responsibilities. With regard to America, specifically, we would like to say to President Obama that waiting for election day to make the right decision on Syria is unacceptable for the Syrians.

“We cannot understand that a superpower ignores the killing of tens of thousands of Syrian civilians because of an election campaign that a president may win or lose. That’s why we are saying there is work that must take place at the Security Council.”

Americans have no right to think of themselves: this is “unacceptable for the Syrians.” As for what the American people think — well, they don’t matter. The US and its allies must “carry out their responsibilities.”

Responsibility — to whom, and for what? The implication is clear enough: we must bear moral responsibility for anything that happens anywhere on earth. The burden of empire is not just material, it is also ethical — a “responsibility to protect,” as the lefty-internationalist apologists for the Libyan debacle would have it. Lost in all this, of course, is the US government’s responsibility to protect the people of their own country, whose interests — and very lives — are needlessly endangered by our reckless foreign policy.

Floating a story about how the administration is resisting increasing pressure to intervene in Syria is a good way to deflect attention from what they are in fact doing right at this moment to overthrow a foreign government. That they are mounting this increasingly overt effort to benefit a movement with clear connections to our supposed Enemy Number One, Al Qaeda, may rile some conservatives, but probably not enough to the point of making a big deal about it. So Senor Sieda needn’t worry: thanks to our “democratic” system, this administration will pay no political price for meddling in the Syrian mess. If the rebels did indeed present the administration with a wish list of weapons, and it isn’t being delivered in a timely manner — well, pieces like the Telegraph story may speed up the process.

One interesting aspect of the Telegraph piece is that it cites at least three separate anonymous “Syrian lobbyists” as saying this and that, but one wonders: who is paying all these lobbyists? And how much money is changing hands in Washington in the effort to push us into war? The Obama reelection campaign’s decision to “globalize” their fundraising efforts puts the question front and center: will foreign interests — the Saudis, the Qataris, the Israelis — buy themselves another Mideast war? Sure, only American citizens can donate to our election campaigns, but it is easy to enough to get around these restrictions by utilizing American stand-ins and indirect payments to nonprofit “advocacy” groups.

If war with Iran would mean a regional or even a new world war — World War III — then Syria is a 21st century version of the Spanish civil war. The Spanish conflict was a dress rehearsal for the main event, in the course of which various “militias” fought one another for control of the Spanish Republic, while the Axis-backed forces of Gen. Francisco Franco and his Falangist party eventually prevailed. There were those in this country who wanted to support the Loyalists, as supporters of the pro-Communist Spanish Republican government were called, but in that event we might very well have wound up with Spain behind the Iron Curtain after the end of World War II. Likewise, in Syria today, in our effort to ally with radical Sunnis in a holy war against Shi’ite Iran, we risk handing power to those who would be more than happy to bite off the hand that fed them.

It's almost as if there is a determined effort to destroy every nation in the region. Less one.

Though I didn't watch Toure (he's going by one name now? Is a symbol next?) today on TV. Maybe he will set me straight.

The Turkish government helped us to be armed," said one member of the FSA living in the Turkey-Syria border area. He claimed that the weapons had arrived at a Turkish port via ship and were then driven to the border without interference from Turkish authorities.

Saudi officials have in the past made clear their feeling that the rebels should be armed, with Saudi King Abdullah saying dialogue was "futile".

Turkey’s Hatay province has become a logistics base, arms bazaar and convalescence centre for Syrian rebels and their supporters - not to mention a hub of intrigue over Islamist funding and squabbling among rebel militias that seem to agree on little else beyond the need to oust Syrian President Bashar Al Assad

Quote:

Turkey’s Hatay province has become a logistics base, arms bazaar and convalescence centre for Syrian rebels and their supporters - not to mention a hub of intrigue over Islamist funding and squabbling among rebel militias that seem to agree on little else beyond the need to oust Syrian President Bashar Al Assad

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and Qatar are paying salaries to rebel forces fighting in the Syrian revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, an Arab diplomat said on Saturday.

"The payment has been going on for months and the agreement was made on April 2 by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with logistical organization from Turkey where some Free Syrian Army factions are based," said the official, who requested anonymity.

"The point of this is to encourage as many factions of the Syrian army to defect and to organize the FSA, control it and prevent any extremist organizations from joining it."

Independent: Saudi Arabia, Qatar Ignite Crisis, Arm Syrian Rebels
The UK-based Independent has learnt that Arab countries; Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are funding and arming the rebel groups in Syria.
In an exclusive report entitled, “Arab states arm rebels as UN talks of Syrian civil war“, The Independent stated on Wednesday, according to a Western diplomat in Ankara, that the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) has received weapons from the both said countries into Syria, via Turkey’s intelligence agency (MIT) aid.

Saudi Arabia, the gulf states snd Turkey are (by far) main supporters of the Syrian rebels. as they were the Libyan rebels and they have their own reasons unrelated to the US or NATO for doing so.

Russia and China have vetoed the latest Western-backed draft resolution on Syria at the UN Security Council. RT exclusively talks to one of the men who raised his hand in that 'NO' vote - Moscow's envoy to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin.

The stoic Russian and Chinese old style national interest foreign policy makes the Americans look like retarded children who can't stop destroying nations and killing people and destabilizing entire regions for exactly zero national benefit.

[/quote] Saudi Arabia, the gulf states snd Turkey are (by far) main supporters of the Syrian rebels. as they were the Libyan rebels and they have their own reasons unrelated to the US or NATO for doing so.[/quote]

Even if you only believe what the mainstream media feeds you, you are still woefully uninformed-

WASHINGTON — A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

And the CIA, my friend, aren't interested in charity, so even if your Libyan rebels are the ones raising hell, they (or whoever ultimately makes up the core of the Syrian 'rebels') are very much related to deals cut with the CIA/NATO/US.